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Internet behemoth Google on Tuesday said it plans to roll out Privacy Sandbox for Android in beta to mobile devices running Android 13 starting early next year. "The Privacy Sandbox Beta will be available for ad tech and app developers who wish to test the ads-related APIs as part of their solutions," the company  said . To that end, developers will need to complete an enrollment process in order to utilize the ads-related APIs, including  Topics ,  FLEDGE , and  Attribution Reporting . Topics, which  replaced  Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) earlier this year, aims to categorize user interests under different "topics" based on their device web browsing history. These inferred interests are then shared with marketers to serve targeted ads. FLEDGE and Attribution reporting, on the other hand, enable custom audience targeting and help measure  ad conversions  without relying on cross-party user identifiers, respectively. Organizations ca...

Spotify's Backstage has been discovered as vulnerable to a severe security flaw that could be exploited to gain remote code execution by leveraging a recently disclosed bug in a third-party module. The vulnerability (CVSS score: 9.8), at its core, takes advantage of a critical sandbox escape in vm2, a popular JavaScript sandbox library ( CVE-2022-36067  aka Sandbreak), that came to light last month. "An unauthenticated threat actor can execute arbitrary system commands on a Backstage application by exploiting a vm2 sandbox escape in the Scaffolder core plugin," application security firm Oxeye said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Backstage  is an open source  developer portal  from Spotify that allows users to create, manage, and explore software components from a unified " front door ." It's used by  many companies  like Netflix, DoorDash, Roku, and Expedia, among others. According to Oxeye, the flaw is rooted in a tool called  software...

Credit: Marina Minkin A novel attack method has been disclosed against a crucial piece of technology called time-triggered ethernet ( TTE ) that's used in safety-critical infrastructure, potentially causing the failure of systems powering spacecraft and aircraft. Dubbed  PCspooF  by a group of academics and researchers from the University of Michigan , the University of Pennsylvania, and the NASA Johnson Space Center, the  technique  is designed to break TTE's security guarantees and induce TTE devices to lose synchronization for up to a second, a behavior that can even lead to uncontrolled maneuvers in spaceflight missions and threaten crew safety. TTE is one among the networking technologies that's part of what's called a mixed-criticality network wherein traffic with different timing and faults tolerance requirements coexist in the same physical network. This means that both critical devices, which, say, enable vehicle control, and non-critical devices, w...

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of now-patched flaws in Zendesk Explore that could have been exploited by an attacker to gain unauthorized access to information from customer accounts that have the feature turned on. "Before it was patched, the flaw would have allowed threat actors to access conversations, email addresses, tickets, comments, and other information from Zendesk accounts with Explore enabled," Varonis  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. The cybersecurity firm said there was no evidence to suggest that the issues were actively exploited in real-world attacks. No action is required on the part of the customers. Zendesk Explore is a  reporting and analytics solution  that allows organizations to "view and analyze key information about your customers, and your support resources." According to the security software company, exploitation of the shortcoming first requires an attacker to register for the  ticketing servi...

Today, most Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions rely on traffic mirroring and Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). Traffic mirroring is typically deployed on a single-core switch to provide a copy of the network traffic to a sensor that uses DPI to thoroughly analyze the payload. While this approach provides detailed analysis, it requires large amounts of processing power and is blind when it comes to encrypted network traffic. Metadata Analysis has been specifically developed to overcome these limitations. By utilizing metadata for analysis, network communications can be observed at any collection point and be enriched by the information providing insights about encrypted communication. Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions have become crucial to reliably monitor and protect network operations. However, as network traffic becomes encrypted and data volumes continue to increase, most traditional NDR solutions are reaching their limits. This begs the question: What detect...

A suspected Chinese state-sponsored actor breached a digital certificate authority as well as government and defense agencies located in different countries in Asia as part of an ongoing campaign since at least March 2022. Symantec, by Broadcom Software, linked the attacks to an adversarial group it tracks under the name  Billbug , citing the use of tools previously attributed to this actor. The activity appears to be driven by espionage and data-theft, although no data is said to have been stolen to date. Billbug , also called Bronze Elgin, Lotus Blossom, Lotus Panda,  Spring Dragon , and  Thrip , is an advanced persistent threat (APT) group that is believed to operate on behalf of Chinese interests. Primary targets include government and military organizations in South East Asia. Attacks mounted by the adversary in 2019 involved the use of backdoors like  Hannotog and Sagerunex , with the intrusions observed in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philip...

Internet giant Google has agreed to pay a record $391.5 million to settle with 40 states in the U.S. over charges the company misled users about the collection of personal location data. "Google misled its users into thinking they had turned off location tracking in their account settings, when, in fact, Google continued to collect their location information," Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum  said  Monday. "For years Google has prioritized profit over their users' privacy. They have been crafty and deceptive," Rosenblum stated. The investigation was sparked by a  2018 report  from the Associated Press that revealed Google was continuing to track users' locations on Android and iOS even when they turned off "location history" in their account settings, effectively undermining the privacy controls. Rosenblum said the location data gathered by Google is combined with other personal and behavioral information it collects to flesh out deta...